In light of a unanimous Thursday afternoonvote by the Durham City Council authorizingthe city manager to work with the Durham Police Department to figure out how tohave police issue citations and warnings forlow-level marijuana offenses in lieu of makingarrests—nice work, Durham, for real—wereached out to Raleigh officials to see if the
state capital might take a page out of the Bull
City’s book.

Oddly enough, according to Raleigh Police
Department spokesman Jim Sughrue, Oak
City cops are ahead of the game. While he
could not immediately provide evidence
supporting his claim, Sughrue said the vast
majority of pot arrests only happen because
the arrestee has been charged with somethingother than possession.
“I’ve been here thirteen years, and I do not
remember any enforcement project that was
targeted at anyone for simple possession of
marijuana. By the same token, if marijuana
is discovered, the officers would not be in a
position where they decide which laws toenforce and which laws they don’t. For simple
possession of marijuana, almost everyone
receives a citation.”
But Police Accountability Community
Task Force spokesman Akiba Byrd tells a
different story, one in which whites dominate
the city’s population—69 percent of residents
are white and 21 percent are black—and
blacks and whites use marijuana at the same
rate, but 67 percent of those arrested on pot
offenses in the city are black.
“We know from our lived experience that
cops are walking up to black people daily and
saying, ‘We smell marijuana,’ and they use
that as an excuse, whether there’s any marijuana
present or not,” he says.
Besides, the city’s official stance appears
to contradict what Sughrue says RPD’s position
is. Asked by PACT to deprioritize marijuana
enforcement, the city responded in
July: “Marijuana is currently a controlledsubstance in North Carolina. Any decision
to alter enforcement practices would require
thoughtful conversation with the Council,
Legislature and Wake County District
Attorney.”
Confused? Yeah, us too.